BRUSSELS – Forget the fiscal cliff. The real issue is the fiscal mountain. According to the International Monetary Fund, the challenge of reducing the public debt/GDP ratio to a safe level is daunting for most advanced countries..

In Europe, many governments, having embarked on the path of fiscal consolidation while their economies were still weak, are now struggling with the growth consequences.As a result, debt stabilization seems to be an increasingly elusive target..

In the US, consolidation has barely begun.Because the private economy is now stronger, it may benefit from more auspicious growth conditions, but the magnitude of the fiscal retrenchment needed – more thanten percentage points of GDP, according to the IMF – is frightening. In Japan, nothing has been donethus far and the size of the required effort defies imagination..

All advanced-country governments are still officially committed to undergoing the pain of adjustment.But how many will become exhaustedbefore implementing this program in full? Willingly or not, some may seek recourse to inflation or administrative measures aimed at trapping domestic savings into financing the state and keeping bond rates low (what economists call financial repression) – or, eventually, to outright debt restructuring..

All threeunorthodox remedies have been used in past debt crises.They can be regarded as alternative forms of taxation, albeit implicit rather than explicit. In the end, they are different methods of forcing current and future generations to shoulder the burden of accumulated debt..

Is it preferable to adjust in full?Or is it advisable to blend consolidation with a dose of alternative medicine?.

Here, the discussion is often couched in moral terms.Adjustment, we are told, is morally commendable, whereas the alternatives all amount to repudiating the contracts that governments entered into with bondholders..

This may be true, but governments are political animals.They caremore about voters’ welfare than about moral principles. So it is worth discussing in purely economic terms what orthodox and unorthodox choices imply from the standpoints of equity and efficiency..

Start with equity.From this perspective, adjustment is hard to beat. Combining taxation and spending cuts allows the burden of adjustment to be distributed precisely. The decision belongs to the legislator. Some adjustments, like in France nowadays, weigh mostly on high-income, high-wealthindividuals; others, like in Italy, weigh on pensioners. These choices were made democratically, in parliaments, as part of budget decisions..

The unorthodox techniques, however, are less nimble and more opaque.Inflation affects those with assets (cash, bonds) or incomes (wages, income from saving accounts) that are not indexed (or are under-indexed) to prices. .Financial repression is basically a form of administrative taxation of domestic savings. And restructuring is a levy on bondholders’ wealth, including that of middle-class pension savers. On distributional grounds, there does not seem to be a good reason to resort to them in lieu of relying on outright taxation..

There are exceptions, though.First, governments and parliaments may be politically unable to take responsibility for distributional choices and prefer to keep themhidden. This is not a good reason, but it does happen..

Second, restructuring concentrates the burden on those holding bonds issued before a certain cut-off date. It thus draws a line between the past and the future – leading to what John Maynard Keynes called “euthanasia of the rentier.” When the burden of past turpitude is too heavy, there may be no other way to protect future generations..

Finally, both inflation and restructuring put some of the burden on non-resident bondholders (through exchange-rate depreciation and the direct reduction of the value of assets, respectively).For taxpayers, this is a tempting formula, especially when a large share of the debt is held externally. To make foreigners pay is, however, disputable. After all, they were not the beneficiaries of the public goods or transfers financed by the issuance of debt. So it should be reserved for cases when the country as a whole has grown insolvent..

Turn now to efficiency. Large-scale adjustments may leave an economy with a weaker capacity to generate growth, because high taxes have deterred investment or cuts in public spending have eroded the quality of infrastructure and education. But this is true of the unorthodox remedies as well..

Financial repression distorts choices by channeling savings to budget financing and away from investment. Inflation implies higher long-term interest rates until markets regain confidence in the central bank. And restructuring weakens banks, which generally hold large portfolios of government bonds, thus making themless able to finance the economy.Indeed, restructuring undermines the foundation of the entire financial system: the safe-asset role of sovereign debt. As developing countries have learned from experience, all these effects are bad for capital allocation and growth..

But an exception can againbe made: When both the private and public sectors are overburdened with debt, adjustment leads to a debt-deflation spiral, particularly when conducted under a fixed exchange-rate regime.In such conditions, full adjustment risksbecoming self-defeating, or at least unreasonably painful, as illustrated by the Greek case.Despite their economic costs, restructuring public debt or eroding all public and private liabilities through inflation can be less detrimental options..

In the end, the alternatives to adjustment are not soft. Barring extreme situations, they generally underperform fiscal adjustment from the standpoint of equity, and are no better in terms of efficiency. So the idea that they offer an easy way out of advanced countries’ current predicament is a fantasy..

Rather than flirting with illusions, governments should confront the hard choices ahead of them. Relying on alternative remedies is sometimes necessary, but they are not painless. They should be considered treatments of last resort..

Jean Pisani-Ferry is Director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic-policy think tank, and Professor of Economics at Université Paris-Dauphine. He was an adviser to the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, and was Director of CEPII, France’s leading international economics research institute. He has also served as Senior Economic Adviser to the French finance minister, Executive President of the French prime minister’s Council of Economic Analysis, and Senior Adviser to the director of the French Treasury.

The heads of major German companies admit that they have no idea what the future holds in store economically. Next year, the situation could rapidly improve or decline. For many companies, the goal is to become as flexible as possible to prepare for any eventuality.

There are people who should know what the future holds for the German economy -- for business trends and jobs, for exports and the euro, and for the price of oil and other commodities.

No, the focus here is not on economic analysts and their oracles, who are all too often off target.Instead, this story is about German CEOs who have managed to steer their companies so successfully that they apparently have a knack for predicting the future. One of them has his office on the 22nd floor and, on a clear day, he can gaze all the way to the Alps. Norbert Reithofer, CEO of BMW, has led the Munich-based carmaker from one record sales year to the next. But before he talks about the economy, Reithofer prefers to tell his visitors about a swan -- a black swan.People used to believe that there were only white swans. But then a black species of swan was discovered in Australia, Cygnus atratus. Reithofer has recommended that his fellow board members read "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable," by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book describesseemingly impossible events that nevertheless occur. Taleb contends that these so-called "black swan events" have an enormous impact because no one expects them -- such as the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008, which sparked the global financial crisis. "I don't know what will happen in 2013," says Reithofer.At a time of extremes, he says, predictions have become impossible. While somemarkets are on the verge of collapse, such as in Southern Europe, others promise robust growth, like Brazil, Russia, India and China. But he admits that even these promising regions can transform into crisis areas overnight -- for instance, if governments put the brakes on car sales with new laws or tariffs.

The Age of Unpredictability.

Wolfgang Reitzle, CEO of the Munich-based Linde Group, agrees that the age of predictability is over. His company, which produces gases for the petroleum, chemical and food industries, has continuously increased its profits -- and its stock market value has jumpedsix-fold over the past10 years. But Reitzle says: "It has never been more difficult than today to give a precise prediction of future economic development." For nearly a decadepreceding the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, economic development was characterized by high growth and minimal fluctuations."Now it's the other way around," says Reitzle, who notes that there is currently only minimal growth, but this is accompanied by extreme turmoil on the markets. It's not just companies like BMW and Linde that find it increasingly difficult to plan and make strategic decisions. Banks and insurance companies along with consumers and depositors now only haveonecertainty: There are no certainties anymore. Today's economic situation is better than the prevailing mood, though -- at least according to a survey by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research.But what good does that do us? If companies and consumers react to the gloomy economic mood -- if they invest less and consume less -- they can cause the actual situation to rapidly deteriorate. To make matters worse: While the worldwide network of financial markets and the Internet boosts growth during an economic boom, it also exacerbates downward trends during a crisis.Insecurity has become the prevailing state of mind in Western industrial societies.Admittedly, there has been growingconfidence over the past fewweeks that the economy will recover in 2013.But major setbacks are possible at any moment -- for instance, Silvio Berlusconi could return to power in Italy, the conflict in the Middle East could escalate or growth in China could slow. And what will happen if President Barack Obama's administration simply fails to break the bitter deadlock over the US federal budget?.

An Anti-Crisis Program

The question is thus no longer how much uncertainty there is, but rather how companies deal with this uncertainty.BMW CEO Reithofer is transforming his company into an extremely flexible organism.The idea is to prevent the auto manufacturer from getting into serious difficultiesdue to unforeseeable events -- in other words, the emergence of black swans.What happens, for example, if sales plummet by 20 percent within one year? Most companies would quickly find themselves in the red. They lay off workers and reduce investments. Later, they emerge weakened from the crisis. To prevent that from happening to BMW, Reithofer and his workscouncil, the powerful body representing employees inside the company, have worked out an anti-crisis program.At first glance, the name "anti-crisis" might sound as if the company simply intends to ban all economic downturns, but the program is actually based on a down-to-earth approach: In the future, the working hours of the BMW workforce will fluctuate to a greater degree in sync with sales.Workers will continue to receive their negotiated monthly salaries.Overtime hours will merely becredited to a working time account -- and deducted during production cutbacks.Working three shifts a day, BMW can produce vehicles round the clock at its plants.That would be one extreme situation. At the other end of the scale, during a crisis, the company could completely shut down the plants for up to five weeks, without even a single employee losing their job or a portion of their wages. During this time off, workers have to take the majority of their annual vacation time.That's the price they have to pay to ensure that their jobs remain secure, even during a downturn.Such an agreement offers an automotive company a number of advantages.During a crisis, it doesn't have to spend money on the severance payments and social plans that are required by German law when firing workers. And when the upswing comes, BMW still has its qualified personnel on board.There are also plans for the carmaker's production plants to become just as flexible as its workers.If there is a change in demand, the assembly line can be quickly retooled to switch from producing SUVs to sedans, and vice versa. BMW also aims to become virtually immune to currency fluctuations and import duties. Consequently, the Munich-based company is expanding its plants in the United States and China, and building a new production site in Brazil.In 2012, the best year in the company's history, the BMW bosslaunched a number of initiatives to prepare the carmaker for such an emergency situation.Reithofer argues that it's all part of good corporate management. When things are going so well, he says, the willingness to change is particularly weak, while the forces of inertia are particularly strong. "That demands a lot of energy," he admits..

Reliable Forecasts 'Virtually Impossible'.

Reitzle takes a similar approach to managing the Linde Group.The CEO says that it's no longer possible to approve a five-yearplan in the belief that the company will actually attain such goals. "That no longer works." He says today's companies need "an entirely different kind of flexibility".

This means that various divisions in a corporation have to be managed in highly diverse ways. In growth regions, he says it's important to play an offensive game and make major investments. By contrast, cutbacks are necessary in stagnating markets.And everything has to be continuously better, faster and more efficient. The High Performance Organization (HPO) program has just been approved, and Reitzle is already introducing HPO II, which aims to save up to €900 million ($1.2 billion)over the next four years. Some executives are grumbling over this. Why now, they ask, when everything is going so well, should we become even better, and leaner? Reitzle says he doesn't understand such an attitude. On the one hand, he says the corporation has to give itself sufficient leeway to take advantage of opportunities and buy out competitors -- such as the recent acquisition of the US company Lincare, which Lindepurchased for some €3.6 billion.On the other hand, he says it's also necessary to work with early warning systems "to be prepared for the worst-case scenario."Ideally, he says, a company cannotbe seriously threatened by any crisis, no matter how surprising it may be. Or, as Reitzle puts it: Linde will then be "indestructible." And it's more than just a certain number of companies listed on Germany's DAX index of blue chipcompanies that are bracing themselves for the next crisis.Many small and medium-sized companies, Germany's so-called Mittelstand, are also preparing for an uncertain future. Onesuch firm is Phoenix Contact.The company is a "hidden champion," one of the many German global market leaders that very few people know.Working out of its headquarters in Blomberg in eastern Westphalia, it sets global standards for electrical connection technology. Phoenix Contact makesone-quarter of all the electrical connectors used in switch cabinets or other devices around the world..

Using a Lull to Gain an Edge.

Over the past12 years, the company has more thantripled its annual sales to over €1.5 billion.But now growth is starting to falter. According to CEO Roland Bent, sales have declined in China and, not surprisingly, they are in a slump in Southern Europe. So what is the head of the company doing? He's investing.In 2013, the company will open an experimental laboratory in Blomberg. It's also building a nearby center for trainees. There are 360 of them -- more than ever before. And, to top it all off, Phoenix Contact is investing tens of millions of euros in the development of a charging plug for electric cars.Such perseverance -- one could alsocall it stubbornness -- is typical of this company.Even during the current crisis, it's sticking to the strategy that it thinks is right. Phoenix Contact is using the temporary lull to gain a technological edge on the competition.During the recession in 2009, for instance, Phoenix engineerspurchased a device that was revolutionary at the time: a 3-D printer to produce prototypes of pin and socket connectors.This allows the company to hand its clients a model made of plastic, instead of merely showing them an image on a monitor.Phoenix Contact is consistently taking an anti-cyclical approach: While others are tightening their belts, the company is going on the offensive.This family-owned company can only afford to do this, though, because it is independent -- especially of shareholders and banks. Phoenix Contact doesn't require any outside capital. In the current climate of uncertainty, many German global market leaders are adopting a mindset similar to that of executives at Phoenix Contact.They seek their own way through the maze of the financial and euro crises. A reliable forecast, says Phoenix Contact CEO Bent, is "virtually impossible" anyway..

Rattled Investors.

The uncertainty over the future economic development has also rattled people who are looking to invest their money.These days, savings accounts produce virtually no interest. After deducting losses due to inflation, the account balance actually shrinks.Anyone who saves their money gets the short end of the stick.But what alternative remains?Many people purchase an apartment, a house, precious metals or stocks.In some cases, prices have risen considerably. In urban centers such as Munich, Hamburg and Berlin, apartments and buildings are worthone-fifthmore than they were two years ago. The price of gold has nearlydoubled over the past five years. Last week, the DAX reached its highest level in five years.But it can't go on like this forever. Responsible financial consultants admit to their clients that there are no safe tips for investments. They recommend diversifying and putting money into different types of investments. This at least makes it possible to spread the risk of suffering losses. While investors, company CEOs, and small and medium-size companiesincreasingly accept that they no longer know how the economy will develop, the new sense of uncertainty has apparently made little impression on one group of professionals: economic analysts.They continue to make forecasts as if there were a mathematical formula to calculate the future. And they don't allow themselves to be bothered by the fact that their previous predictions were frequently off the mark.Even the United Nations is warning of a worldwide recession.In its report "World Economic Situation and Prospects 2013," the UN writes: Economic growth could be close to zero. But the experts also predict that growth could be 2.4 percent, or even 3.8 percent, depending on the assumptions made. Everything is possible. It's also interesting to note that the black swan has meanwhile extended its natural range of distribution.It's now endemic to New Zealand. A few specimens have even been sighted in the Netherlands.Translated from the German by Paul Cohen

The on-again/off-again fiscal cliff negotiationslook like they may finally
be nearing a deal — although such rumors have come and gonerepeatedly in recent
weeks.But assume for a second that Congress and the President really have
reached an 11th hour deal to avert the worst of the cliff’s tax hikes
and spending cuts—how lasting will the damagebe from the weeks of
brinksmanship?This is a separate question from the impact of the actual policies contained
in a deal.Pretty much any deal that could pass muster in both houses of
Congress would involve tax increases and likely also spending cuts, and would
therefore be at least a short-term drag on economic growth. (The longer-term
impact of a deal that grappled seriously with the nation’s budget deficits is
harder to gauge.)But what about the debate itself: Would policymakers’ willingness to play
chicken with the economy — and their apparent inability to reach a deal until
the last possible moment even in the face of near-certain recession — have its
own impact on economic growth?Odds are that we’ll know for sure in a matter of
weeks. But in the meantime we can look at the closest recent parallel: last
year’s battle over raising the debt ceiling.A quick refresher: In the summer of 2011, a battle broke out in Washington
over whether to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, which had until then been a
fairly routine practice. The prospect of hitting the ceiling — which in theory
could have forced massive cuts in government spending, or even led the U. S. to
default on its debts — roiled financial markets and led to a steep drop in
consumer sentiment. Congress eventually agreed to raise the debt ceiling via a
last-minute agreement that ultimately paved the way for the current crisis. But
the stopgap deal wasn’t enough to prevent Standard & Poor’s from downgrading
the nation’s triple-A credit rating, which further hurt both markets and
confidence.But the lasting impact of the debt-ceiling drama is far from clear.Consumer
sentiment took months to rebound, and markets didn’t return to pre-crisis highs
until early 2012. However, most measures of real economic activity either
quickly rebounded or never fell at all. Growth in Gross Domestic Product slowed
to 1.3% in the third quarter of 2011, down from 2.5% in the second quarter, but
bounced back to 4.1% in the finalthree months of the year — the best mark in
the recovery. Consumer spending actually accelerated in the third quarter of the
year, as did measures of business investment and manufacturing activity.Job
growth did slow markedly in the summer of 2011, a possible sign of caution among
businesses, but there were similar hiring slowdowns in both2010 and 2012 — and
in any case, hiring rebounded in late 2011 and early 2012.It’s always risky to read too much into just one data point, and there are
clear differences between last year’s situation and the current one. For one
thing, the debt-ceiling debate was a more or less binary event: Either Congress
would raise the debt ceiling, or it wouldn’t. Once it did, the immediate threat
passed.This time, there are a wide range of outcomes, nearly all of which would
involve at leastsome short-term drag on growth.The debt ceiling was also a
mostly theoretical issue for most Americans, whereas the fiscal cliff would mean
an immediate tax increase for virtually all U. S. workers. Moreover, repeated
flirtations with disaster could have a cumulative effect, leading investors and
consumers to lose confidence in their leaders.Still, there are some similaritiesbetween the twosituations.As the Journal
noted today,
consumer confidence and stock prices have already taken a hit from the cliff
debate. But as in 2011, actual economic activity is sending more mixed messages.
Business investment has slumped severely in the second half of the year, perhaps
due to fears of the looming cliff. But hiring has remained fairly steady, and
income and spending figures came in stronger-than-expected in November. Onereading of the 2011 experience would be that if Congress and the President reach
a deal, the big drop in confidence won’t translate into a real hit to economic
growth.Of course, if there isn’t a deal, then all bets are off.

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.